The German critics are discussing with high encomiums a volume of poems by ANNETTE VON DROSTE, a deceased poetess of Westphalia. It is entitled _Das Religiöse Jahr_ (The Religious Year), and is inspired with that absolute devotion which lends so great a charm to the poems of Montgomery, the Moravians, and the mystical writers generally. * * * * * BYRON'S _Manfred_, with musical accompaniments, by R. Schumann, is about to be produced at the Weimar theatre. * * * * * JAHN, the well-known Leipsic professor, is engaged in writing a life of Beethoven. * * * * * RICHARD WAGNER, the revolutionist, musical composer, and writer upon æsthetics, has published a new work, entitled _Oper und Drama_ (Opera and Drama), which the German critics fall upon with considerable ferocity. They complain that while he entirely rejects the old form of the opera, he does not indicate what is the new kind of musical drama to be substituted for it. Wagner has also published _Three Opera Poems_, which the same critics cannot but praise for their originality, power, and inspiration. If the music of these operas is adequate to the _libretti_, say they, they are really new and grand productions. This would seem, also, to be proved by the fact that one of them has been brought out at Weimar, through the influence and under the direction of Liszt. The author is living in exile in Switzerland, and is engaged upon a dramatic trilogy with a prelude. He no longer professes to write operas, but musical dramas. * * * * * An attempt has been made in Germany to register the enormous number of books and pamphlets which the Germans themselves have published on their two great poets, Goethe and Schiller. A catalogue of the Goethean literature in Germany, from 1793 to 1851, has been published by Balde, at Cassel, and in London by Williams and Norgate. The Schiller literature, from 1781 to 1851, is likewise announced by the same firm. * * * * * A very excellent translation of sundry old Scottish and English ballads has just made its appearance at Munich, from the pen of W. DOENNIGER. It contains sixteen Scotch and seventeen English ballads, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, all rendered with great fidelity, and in the true spirit of the original. So successful is the book that a second edition of it is about to appear, with illustrations by Kaulbach, Voltzen, and other eminent artists. * * * * * The _Augsburg Gazette_ states that the Congregation of the Index has just prohibited all the works of Eugene Sue and Proudhon; also a clerical Turin paper, called the _Buona Novella_; a work on animal magnetism, by Tomasi; a manual for schoolmasters, printed at Asti in 1850; and all the works of Gioberti. * * * * *